She was truly sweet and loving but had a hard time for reasons both in and out of her control.
Her mother and brother threatened to sue for custody about every 2-3 years of Evan's life.
She and I private messaged a lot and somehow she seemed to be able to make small adjustments in her reactions after we talked. Small adjustments, not big enough ones to make a long term difference.
A major part of her problems was accepting the irrationality of the systems that got involved in her and E's lives. She kept wanting sane-ish and rational responses from the probation officer (who truly seemed like a nutcase to me), the officer in charge of his indeterminate juvy sentence (in her area, kids put in juvy are there until certain goals are met, but getting anyone to define those goals seemed impossible. the more she asked for concrete goals, the more angry the officer got and the more he refused to give her ANY idea what those goals were.), and the entire system as a whole.
Add that to several therapists who insisted that if she cooked what he wanted for dinner and let him play all the video games he wanted, then E would stop assaulting her and others, stealing and setting fires.
She also had a long period of unemployment because she had to keep leaving work due to E's issues added to the financial strain of restitution for the many things E damaged or set fire to.
It was all just more than she could handle. Esp as her ONLY support was this forum and she felt pressured by many here. She felt very threatened by her family and given her history, I can't say I would feel any different. She was a victim of her bro's molestation, and knew other victims, and was determined to keep E from being his victim.
Some of this is pieced together from her posts and much is from what hse said in PMs.
It was a tragedy waiting to happen, and hopefully both she and E are at peace now.